When it comes to managing your customer service, it can be difficult to know which approach is best for your business. In recent years there has been mounting pressure for businesses to provide a selection of communication options for customers. All customers have preferences when it comes to communication, and businesses have realized that by denying customer’s their preference, they risk losing them to their competitors. Businesses around the world have responded to this mounting pressure by offering a range of communication channels including phone, email, webchat, social media, and SMS. However, for many businesses, this has been a slow evolution where they have implemented systems as the need for a new communication channel arose.
That is largely how the multi-channel approach has become common. Most businesses already provided customer service support in the form of phone calls, so they already had a system to support this. They then added a new system for handling social media, webchat, and so on. As these systems were implemented and focus on these areas of communication grew, new teams sprung up in the business to meet these needs. Traditional CRMs were built to handle the customer service needs of businesses at the time, but both customers and businesses are changing rapidly in the digital age.
Many businesses have now come to realize that this isn’t the most efficient approach and that they’d actually be better served by adopting an omnichannel approach. You have all the same core functionality with an omnichannel approach, but all of your channels are unified under one system. This can have a dramatic effect on providing a seamless experience to customers. Today we’re going to take a look at a traditional CRM approach and compare it to the omnichannel approach that has been gaining traction in recent years.
A traditional Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, is a platform that a company uses to communicate with customers and store data. Put simply, it allows the business to better manage relationships and information. However, most of these traditional CRM systems are not omnichannel, but rather only capture one or a few channels of customer communication. For example, a company may use a CRM system for their call center, but handle emails from customers on a different platform. We are increasingly seeing companies move away from this form of customer interaction management and instead opt for an omnichannel approach that is better suited to providing a unified customer experience. Before we look at why businesses are now moving towards an omnichannel approach, let’s delve a little deeper into traditional CRM systems by looking at the pros and cons.
Most companies are now opting for an omni-channel approach to customer service in which the customer can communicate with the business according to their communication preferences. With an omnichannel customer service platform, all of these customer-interactions are handled within a single system, resulting in a seamless experience for both customers and employees. Let’s take a look at the pros of an omnichannel platform to see why they are rising in popularity.
When it comes to large businesses, it’s easier to see why they would benefit from an omnichannel platform. The omnichannel approach maximizes efficiency and streamlines processes that are often bloated and complex in a large company, leading to time lost and higher costs. But what about small and medium sized businesses? Is omnichannel right for them too?
The simple answer is yes, now let’s delve into why.
An omnichannel approach is all about the customer. It’s about reducing friction, creating a seamless experience, and meeting the high expectations of customers. As a small or medium-sized business, one of the key ways that you set yourself apart from the competition is what you offer in terms of customer experience. Why do your customers keep coming back to you? What do they like about how you interact with them? What is it they love about your brand? Larger businesses can offer low prices due to economies of scale, but this is much harder for small and medium-sized businesses. You may not be able to compete on price in the same way larger companies can, and that’s fine. It’s fine because what you’re offering isn’t just price, you’re offering a unique and excellent customer experience.
It’s a lot easier for small and medium-sized businesses to compete on customer experience, you just have to know how. It starts with being customer-centric from the inside out. If you know your customers want to contact you via multiple communication channels, and they want a high degree of responsiveness from you, then you need a platform that can support this level of engagement. Managing several systems is taxing and complex, and this is all energy that could be spent on focusing on improving your customer experience.
Bigger isn’t always better, and smaller businesses have a unique advantage in the modern world. According to a recent study, 80% of customers are more likely to purchase a product or service from a brand that offers a more personalized experience. Small and medium-sized businesses offer personalized experiences in a way that larger companies struggle to do on the same level. That isn’t to say that large companies can’t offer a personalized experience. Most large companies do build personalization into their marketing and do it very successfully. There are many types of personalization, and larger companies tend to excel at offering personalized product suggestions due to their ability to crunch huge amounts of customer data. However, a large operation with many moving parts and employees from all over the world can struggle to maintain consistency in the message and customer service interactions in a way that smaller businesses don’t.
It’s easier to manage one platform than many platforms. But management isn’t just about training and software updates, but also about the cost. If you have several platforms, you’re subject to many different payment structures that have their own complexities built into them. More problems can arise is renewal costs change over time. Even if you have a custom-built bespoke system, managing any software issues can become extremely expensive is problems arise.
You might be a small or medium-sized business now, but you may not be in the future. Investing in highly scalable emerging technology is a way of future-proofing your business. You can seamlessly scale up your operation without causing any disruption for your customers. This can be a whole lot more complex when you have several systems that may become inappropriate for your business over time.
You can think of an omni-channel platform as a stepping stone to an omnichannel platform. Many people get confused about the difference between the two approaches because they both involve allowing customers to contact your business by using different communication channels. From the outside, it can be difficult to spot the difference. If you’re a customer, you will be able to contact their company you’re buying from via social media, call, webchat and so on, whether they have a multi-channel or omnichannel platform. It’s in how they are structured that the differences lie. Everything is self-contained in a multi-channel platform, and everything is connected in an omnichannel platform.
Omnichannel is about adopting a modern approach for a modern business with a modern customer base. Did you know that 98% of customers switch between devices on the same day? It’s simply a fact that your customers will be using different channels to contact you, so you need to ensure that these communication channels are robust and well managed. 64% of customers also expect to receive a seamless customer service regardless of which channel they are using.
To truly get to the bottom of which approach is best for your company, you need to ask yourself these questions.
We’re extremely excited to announce that we have changed our company name to CommBox. It’s still the same company with the same awesome people! just a new name, a fresh look, and a brighter future.
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